The Sweet Illusion: Munch’s Freia Frieze and the Bitter Reality of Labor
There’s something almost hypnotic about standing before Edvard Munch’s Freia frieze. At first glance, it feels like you’ve stumbled into a choreographed dream. Fruit pickers stretch with graceful precision, water cascades in rhythmic unison, and couples glide across beaches as if in a silent ballet. Munch’s brushstrokes, dominated by blues and greens, seem to dance across the canvas. It’s art as movement, art as escape. But here’s the thing: the longer you look, the more the illusion cracks.
Personally, I think what makes this piece so fascinating—and so unsettling—is the disconnect between its vibrant, idyllic scenes and the harsh reality of the women who were meant to admire it. Commissioned in 1922 to adorn the walls of the Freia chocolate factory’s canteen, the frieze was ostensibly a gift to the “chocolate girls,” the young women who toiled in the factory. But was it really? Or was it a gilded distraction, a way to sugarcoat the bitter truth of their lives?
Let’s take a step back and think about it: Munch, the man behind The Scream, creating art for factory workers. On the surface, it feels noble, even revolutionary. But curator Ana María Bresciani, whose exhibition Edvard Munch and the Chocolate Factory frames the frieze within the broader context of workers’ rights and gender inequality, raises a crucial question: Were these women truly the intended beneficiaries of this art, or were they just props in a larger narrative of corporate progressivism?
What many people don’t realize is that the early 1920s were a pivotal moment for Norwegian labor rights. Workers had just won the right to an eight-hour day and summer holidays—luxuries the “chocolate girls” likely never experienced. As Bresciani points out, these women probably didn’t have access to summer cottages, swimming, or even art. Munch’s scenes, while beautiful, were worlds away from their reality. This raises a deeper question: Was the frieze meant to uplift them, or to remind them of what they couldn’t have?
One detail that I find especially interesting is Munch’s own attitude toward the commission. He wrote about the workers “understanding the pictures better and better” as they ate their meals. But did he truly care about their understanding, or was this just a way to justify his own role in the project? His behavior—refusing to add doors and chimneys to the houses in the paintings unless a chauffeur waited for him—suggests a certain detachment, even arrogance.
Then there’s the issue of cost. Freia’s owner, Johan Throne Holst, paid Munch the equivalent of £192,000 in today’s money for the frieze. Meanwhile, the women who worked in the factory survived on starvation wages. As the Oslo-based newspaper Arbeiderbladet pointed out in 1923, this was a glaring contradiction: “While the workers are kept on starvation wages, large capital is invested in costly paintings.” What this really suggests is that the frieze wasn’t just art—it was a symbol of inequality, a way for Freia to project an image of progressiveness while exploiting its workforce.
From my perspective, the most unsettling aspect of this story is how it mirrors broader patterns of corporate virtue signaling. Freia provided its workers with free baths, manicures, and modern toilets, but these perks were less about compassion and more about maintaining a productive, hygienic workforce. The company wanted to be seen as a progressive employer, but its cacao sourcing—from South America, the Caribbean, and later colonial Ghana—was built on exploitation and racism.
If you take a step back and think about it, the Freia frieze is a microcosm of a much larger trend: the use of art and philanthropy to mask systemic injustice. Munch, for his part, seems to have been more interested in fame and public commissions than in the plight of the workers. As Bresciani notes, he was a strategist, leveraging his connections to secure high-profile projects. The frieze wasn’t just art—it was a career move.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how it challenges our romanticized view of artists as champions of the oppressed. Munch, despite his focus on the human condition in works like The Scream, appears to have been largely indifferent to the struggles of the “chocolate girls.” His art, in this context, becomes a tool of the powerful, not a voice for the voiceless.
In my opinion, the Freia frieze is a reminder that art is never neutral. It’s always embedded in power structures, always shaped by the intentions of those who commission it. When we admire the frieze today, we should also ask ourselves: Whose story is being told? And whose is being erased?
The exhibition at the Munch Museum in Oslo, which runs until 2026, forces us to confront these questions. It’s not just a celebration of Munch’s work—it’s a critique of the systems that enabled it. And that, I think, is what makes it so important. It’s a call to look beyond the surface, to see the bitterness behind the sweetness.
